Messages - Istaev

Is anyone have read his new book "Sorcery and Religion in Ancient Scandinavia"? Is it worth it?

this slim volume is anti-scholastic to a fault. there is little academic rigor here and it is practically unedited. it has an arbitrary blog-like tone and structure and is, on first and last impression, very unprofessional. this leads one to believe vikernes is, as a writer, either incompetent or simply lazy. in other words, there is little to no literary value in these pages.and yet this is stylistically and substantively distinct from just about anything you'll read nowadays and has somegenuinely interesting and imaginative insights into its subject matter. whether or not his interpretations are "true" is less relevant to this author than the fact that they possess great interpretive power.

[yes it's worth it. for the content and not the writing. in a nutshell, it's an esoteric interpretation of Voluspa. Norse myth has been conventionally understood as a Germanic pre-Christian version of Genesis/Revelations. he shapes the poemin a much more down-to-earth fashion. it's sort of like Growth of the Soil for retards.]

hard to deny doom metal in either the heavy metal or death metal variety isn't boring. then again, drone is its primary method of delivery. i always thought the mission statement was to do depressed mood music, which includes boredom.

Why do you want friends/peers to like this music? That's not an accusation but a genuine question. Do you want them to enjoy it so you have something more to share with them? Do you want them to learn something from the music on an artistic level? an ideological level? Or do you want them to respect you? All of these can be good reasons but what's most important to you?

In any case, albums: I'd probably suggest In the Nightside Eclipse for black metal and for death metal, I dunno, maybe Here in After or The Red in the Sky is Ours. actually I'd probably do a mix tape.

I guess the real question is: who makes these decisions, by what criteria, and where do we draw the line?

Whenever the topic turns to eugenics around these parts the topic becomes genocide. The Final Solution for people I don't like (I mean, "stupid people"). always. immediately. why?Every single goddamn time eugenics is brought up it devolves into The Day of the Rope.look at the writings. it's a recurrent theme. what does it say about the writer(s) and its readers? why are they attracted to this?

nerds suck at life in general for this reason. 99% of the time you see a nerd failing it's because of underdeveloped and/or atrophying social skills.nerds (I mean hessians, lol) fail at leadership, with women, at networking, at advancing their careers, at making friends, etc; the list goes on. which is why they're butthurt by the world.

practical skills like cooking, home repairs, and car maintenance are nice to have but not really essential to getting around in postindustrial society. learning how to grow your own food or how to use/maintain small arms are even less useful. you can insert martial arts, sailing, rock climbing, or whichever macho pastime you prefer here.it's good to challenge yourself and try to learn something you suck at or never thought you'd do well, I guess, as long as it doesn't take away too much time/energy from getting better at what you're actually good at.

I think that's the essence of what the original poster was trying to get across. I think the thread got derailed by bickering and uninteresting tangents but I'll try to steer this around a little..We're wild animals ultimately and violent primordial impulses remain despite socialization. That's what sports-entertainment is for. Fake violence. Mock combat.There's no place for real violence in postindustrial society except to defend it and spread its way of life. and even in that case, the military is still a marginalized institution, probably because it's intrinsically authoritarian and filled with guys who don't fit well into civilized society except as ineffectual rogues.

Tangerine Dream? Phaedra is great. Actually everything through Stratosfear is great to varying degrees. I like Zeit a lot for some reason too. Klaus Schulze's Irrlicht is an interesting companion to that album.

I like Lustmord. It's the first and the best dark ambient. It's more expansive and evocative than just about anybody who tried to imitate him. Heresy and The Place Where the Black Stars Hang. other stuff is less interesting.

I really don't understand why Lord Wind and Beherit get all this unearned praise. Lord Wind is cheesey, amateurish, and derivative. He's been ripping off movie soundtracks (which are corny in and of themselves) and failing at it the whole time. It's just embarrassingly bad from a musical standpoint. Beherit's ambient stuff is good but nothing earthshattering and certainly isn't among the best this category of music has to offer nor does it match Drawing Down the Moon for that matter.

what I gather from this deliberately incomplete outline is that black metal peaked in 1994, and had more quality releases in '92/'93 than in later years but still held out for a few years.the music inspired events and events inspired the music. art is greater than the historical narrative, however, and after the events came to an end the music became fully autonomous and self-conscious for the space of roughly a year ('94). this was probably, like the introduction of writing and subsequent recording of tales by heroic pagan societies, fatal to the tradition. shit happens.also, in terms of both artistic merit and listening priority i've determined (in order)...

I started with Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in high school. I'm not sure that was a great idea in hindsight. In college, the department I was in was very focused on the history of philosophy and reading the primary texts of the great thinkers of Western philosophy. It was a very conservative department academically-speaking and I think I benefited from this approach greatly. My progress was extremely linear, from the Greeks to the early moderns (we skipped over the medieval period almost entirely) to those crazy Germans and then to more contemporary (but not too contemporary) thinkers. It makes sense. It's hard to appreciate Kant if you aren't familiar with e.g., Descartes, Locke, & Hume. It's basically impossible to follow Hegel without a decent grasp of Kant. Unfortunately, you're going to miss half of what Schopenhauer or Kierkegaard have to say if you've skipped Hegel. You're missing out on a lot of Nietzsche by passing up Schopenhauer. And good luck with Heidegger if you haven't read all of it.

I got Trio, Keyed Up, and and Linnaeus Väsen recently. Minus a handfull of tracks, overall not nearly as great as Essence but I really enjoyed Linnaeus Väsen. It's got an aristocratic 18th century sort of feel to it. I'd easily recommend to anyone who was obsessed with Essence!

If you join the military, especially the infantry, with a hidden agenda you won't be successful and you will hate life. You're going to hate life regardless but if you're uncommitted and/or think you can get away with being an individual as a junior soldier or Marine, well, see what happens.. It's possible to "quit" before the end of recruit training but they don't make it easy for you because they're trying to make good on their investment. In addition to that you are far from combat-ready during this initial phase of training; the valuable training comes after the indoc. Infantry training is only useful if you're 100% with the program. Enlisting to acquire "combat skillz for _insert Turner Diaries scenario here_" is a bad reason to join the military. And by bad I mean fucking stupid.

good reasons to be a grunt: - want to kill people - want to do something dangerous/heroic - seriously interested in weapons/tactics (i.e., modern military weapons/tactics, not LARPing)In other words: someone who wants to experience combat and is willing to get killed for it or worse.Before their first deployment enlisted grunts acquire a 'combat mindset' (confident and aggressive), become competent/proficient with a handful of individual and crew-served weapons, learn basic military tactics, and may get an opportunity to learn small unit leadership.

Oh, I almost forgot. Eggheads make terrible grunts. I'll tell you why: without a combat mindset, without mental preparedness, martial skills and knowledge are useless. Now some of you may be still have that curiosity about combat, killing, etc. You want a challenge, you want to push yourself. Good for you. Just give yourself an honest self-evaluation before you do something which will do you more harm than good. Sensitive minds (artists, intellectuals, social introverts, etc) generally do not do well in the military and certainly not in the infantry.

So I downloaded this about a month ago and I haven't stopped listening to it. I've been in love with traditional folk music for the last 15 years or so, especially Scandinavian and Irish, but usually to supplement my metal, electronic, and classical diet. This one really blew me away though. Every track is gold. I was familiar with their Whirled album and enjoyed it but it didn't inspire me to investigate any further into their back catalog. Anyone have any opinions on these guys, especially their other work, and where someone could purchase their albums. Post links!